The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.
The use of electronic receipts with the purchase of goods and services continues to be more widely adopted. For example, many vendors now offer an option for customers to receive electronic receipts via email instead of paper receipts at the point of purchase. Electronic receipts have several benefits over paper receipts. For example, electronic receipts do not require any consumables, e.g., paper, ink, etc., and they can be quickly and easily copied and stored in multiple locations. In addition, electronic receipts are now being required by some third parties, such as government entities, etc. For example, Mexico has implemented an electronic invoicing requirement known as Comprobante Fiscal Digital por Internet (CFDI) that requires vendors and customers to maintain receipts in electronic form to satisfy recordkeeping requirements. Furthermore, some third party requirements require that data be maintained in different formats, such as portable document format (PDF) and extensible markup language (XML). CFDI requires that data be maintained in XML and PDF is optional. Some vendors provide Web applications with a graphical user interface that allows customers to manually enter receipt data and generate electronic receipts in a form that satisfies third party requirements for receipt data. Despite their availability, there are some drawbacks to these Web applications. They all require that customers manually enter data, which can be cumbersome, prone to error and time consuming. These issues are exacerbated by the fact that there is no standard specification for the layout and operation of the graphical user interfaces provided by vendors, so they all tend to be different. In addition, many of these Web applications include an authentication requirement, such as user authentication, that must be satisfied before a user is granted access to enter receipt data. All of these factors can lead to an unsatisfactory user experience.